Monthly Mingle 28: The World of Spice Cookies

No other month in the year can boast of "sugar and spice and all things nice" like December can. Ovens around the blog world are currently working overtime baking cakes, pies, and sweet treats for the Holidays. Cookies are always a vital part of the Holiday baking. Every country has its own cookie specialty and very family have their own recipes for baking such specialities.

To celebrate the Holiday baking season I would like to get all my friends and readers together to join me in this month's Monthly Mingle and bake cookies. Not just any cookies mind you. For this mingle I am looking for traditional spiced cookies from around the world.

Add a hint of cardamom, a touch of cinnamon or a sprinkling of saffron to a cookie and you have cookies full of delicious fragrance and flavor. I would like you to travel the world of cookies in search of traditional spice cookies specialities. The Indian Badam Katli, Italian Amaretti, French macaroons, German Lebkuchen, Lebanese Baklava or the Austrian Vanilla Kipferl are all exciting options for this mingle and I would like to end the year with a luxurious extravaganza of spicy, sweet, savory, piquant and tasty cookies. Come join me and celebrate a World of Spice Cookies!

This cookie bible includes not only over 100 cookie recipes but offers helpful baking notes and fascinating historical trivia. Each cookie is photographed in glorious full color with step-by-step instructions on how to prepare, bake, serve and store your creations. And a copy of this cookie book could just become yours!

Anita has been kind enough to provide a copy of her Field Guide to Cookies to one lucky winner. Being my personal cookie expert I have asked Anita to judge and pick an entry that best qualifies. Remember the criteria for the entries are:

the cookies have to be a traditional speciality from a country of choice

contain at least one spice in the ingredients

Get those aprons on and your cookies sheets out and send me your world of spice cookies. The deadline is 5 January 2009.

There has been a minor change in the Monthly Mingle's guidelines. I am requesting all my readers submitting entries for the Monthly Mingle to send me recipes that have exclusively been made for the respective mingle. Over the past few months I have noticed one entry being submitted to 5 - 6 blog events! In the past I did not mind if your Monthly Mingle entry was submitted to 1 or 2 other events. However, after seeing some entries being submitted to 6 blog events I decided to enforce this guideline with immediate effect.

Here’s how it works:

Create a dish that fits the theme of “World of Spice Cookies” as described above

Post about it on your blog anytime from now until 5 January 2009 (entries must be in English, please).

Your creation must exclusively be prepared for the current Monthly Mingle theme and cannot be submitted to any other blog event.

You must provide a link to this post and send the details to me (see below).

Once you’ve posted your dish, send an email with “Monthly Mingle: World of Spice Cookies” in the subject line to: meetasmingle (at) gmail (dot) com by 5 January with the following information:

your name

your location

the name of your blog and its URL

the name of your dish and a link to the relevant post

a copy of the main photo of your dish 200px wide (and compressed so that it is below 1MB!)

I hope you will enjoy your cookie baking. Anita and I are really looking forward to each wonderful cookie creation. See you!

If you too would like to guest host the Monthly Mingle in the future drop me an email at blogmeeta [at] gmail [DOT] com (Please note that this email address is different to the one you should send in your entries at.)

Yes, finally all the projects we planned for this year are done and we are off to Winter vacation next week. I bet you are getting ready for XMas too, we will be in Disney World at that time, can''t wait to get away after all the noise and strangers at home for almost 3 mnts.

Have fun hosting, I will be back next year. Have a merry Christmas and a very happy new year to you and family in advance, enjoy. Hugs to you! :))

Meeta, just to shake off my doubts, how does a badam or kaju katli get called a 'cookie'? Isn't it just an Indian swee? This is not to say you are wrong - it is just that I could not see it as a cookie so would just like to know what you think?

Sorry to hear that HC - but I hope you will be back next month. Enjoy your break

Asha - yaahh! good to see you back my friend. Hope you enjoy your vacation and hope to see you at the mingle next month.

Sunshinemom - i wanted to give a larger range of creations for the mingle. while the kaju katli and also the baklava are not really defined as "cookies" I will accept kaju katli under the idea of rolled cookies and baklava under the concept of bar cookies. hope that helps!

Thank you for visiting What's For Lunch, Honey? and taking time to browse through my recipes, listen to my ramblings and enjoy my photographs. I appreciate all your comments, feedback and input. I will answer your questions to my best knowledge and respond to your comments as soon as possible.

In the meantime I hope you enjoy your stay here and that I was able to make this an experience for your senses.

Hello, I am Meeta a freelance food photographer, stylist and writer living in the cuturally rich city of Weimar, Germany with my husband and our son, where I enjoy preparing multi-cultural home cooked meals with fresh organic ingredients. What's for lunch, Honey? is my award winning food blog where I combine my love for food with my love for photography and styling...